money; for you may depend we were kept
pretty short of provisions; and after we had
eaten our bellies full, we all returned thanks
to God for his kindness towards us, and
waited with patience till about half-past ten
o'clock, when the turnkey came in and called
us, and told us that we were wanted. And
when we came into the room where the
gentleman was that I had spoken to the day
before, he told me that the Consul would
be there directly; and, when the Consul
came, he spoke to us, and asked us what ships
belonging to England were stationed off' the
North Cape, and how we came to leave our
ship. We told him; and he spoke to the
Governor, and the next morning we got our
discharge from the prison. Now, in the state
that we were in, we were not fit to go into
a clean house, or amongst clean people: so
the Consul put us into an outhouse that he
had, and gave us some clean straw to lie on,
and two duck frocks and trousers apiece, for
our old clothes were fairly worn out. And he
used to send us our provision every day from
his own house; and in a week's time we were
clear of all vermin, and as clean as anybody
need to be. And the English merchants and
their ladies who resided at Archangel, when
they came to know how we had been served
by the Russians, made a subscription for us,
and bought us many things that we stood
in need of.

We stopped with our good Consul till the
latter end of September, when the " Oberon,"
an English gun-brig, arrived at Archangel,
for to take a convoy home to England; and
the captain of her, Captain Young, a very
good man, heard about us, and seeing the
state that we were in— for the places that the
vermin had eaten into us were not quite
healed up— he told us that he would take us
to England. And on the first day of October
we were sent on board of the " Oberon," and
the captain and officers behaved very kindly
to us; and we sailed from Archangel on the
4th day of October, and on the 17th of October,
when nearly off the North Cape, we fell in
with our ship the " Spitfire," and the
" Alexander " frigate. We were sent on board of our
ship; and, to our great surprise, we were put
in irons. So Captain Young stated to our
captain the state he found us in at Archangel,
and the punishment that we had received
from the Russians. But our captain swore
that we intended to run away from the
ship, and we were kept in irons till we arrived
at Leith Roads, when orders came on board
to let us out of irons; for Admiral Young had
his flag at Leith Roads, and his son, the
captain of the " Oberon," had acquainted his
father with the state he had found us in, at
Archangel. And so now we thought it was all
over with this affair; but it was not so, for
our ship received orders to go round to
Portsmouth to be refitted; and in going round from
Leith, as soon as we left the Downs— for we
were then under another admiral our captain
turned the hands up, and gave me and a man
named Andrew Pacldon three dozen lashes
apiece; for he swore that we two had been
ringleaders, and that we intended to run
away from the ship. The other two men he
forgave: and thus this affair ended.

Now when we arrived at Portsmouth Ave
refitted our ship, and we were sent to cruise
off Cherbourg along with some men-of-war.
On the 10th day of February, 1813, it being a
fine morning, we chased a French lugger,
close into the land, and the wind dying away,
and what there was coming from the north-ward,
the lugger got clear of us; and we
being close in-shore, and standing away to
the westward, I happened to be at the
mast-head to look out. It was about half-past ten
o'clock in the forenoon, and I was sitting on
the maintop-gallant yard, when a little
battery, which we had not seen before, opened
fire upon us, and the second or third shot they
fired carried away our main-top gallant-mast;
and me sitting on the main-top gallant-yard,
I had a very clumsy fall; but our main-sail
being hauled up, I had the good fortune
to fall into the belly of the main-sail, where
after some time lying there senseless—for I
must have struck against the main-yard in
my fall, for I was bleeding a good deal— when
there were some hands sent to help me out
of the main-sail; and when I got on deck, I
was obliged to be sent to the doctor, when I
soon got well.

Now our ship, in this skirmish, had her
foremast badly wounded, and we had several
men wounded beside myself; so, after we got
clear of the Frenchmen and joined our
commodore, which was the " Fishguard " frigate,
we were sent to Spithead to have our damages
repaired; whilst I and about a dozen of
our men were sent on board of the guardship,
at Spithead, for fear we should run
away. And, by the time that our ship came
out to Spithead again, and ready for sea, we
were sent on board of her again, and we
hoisted the convoy signal for the coast of
Africa; and, on the 20th of April, 1813, we
sailed from Spithead with about three
hundred sail of ships, all under different convoys.
* * * At last we steered for Prince's Island,
where we arrived on the 10th day of August.
We had not been long there when they were
all taken with the fever, the captain and all;
and before the next morning three out of the
seven that had been away along with the
captain died, and before twenty-four hours
was over our heads we had sixty men in their
hammocks; and the sickness went all through
the ship, and we lost thirty-six men and
officers in about six weeks' time. And it was
here where I lost my long hair; for sailors
in those days wore long hair; but we had no
long hair left in our ship, for we nearly all
had our heads shaved, for the complaint
chiefly lay in the head; and by the latter
part of October we were all pretty well
restored to health.